-dd3c0cab-c861-415d-9a43-e209c551a419.jpeg)
Paris, July 19 (BNA): A heat wave engulfing Europe erupted north Monday into Britain and sparked fierce forest fires in Spain and France, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people, as planes and firefighters poured in bombarding the waters to fight the flames in the dry forests.
Two people have been killed in Spain’s fires which its prime minister has linked to global warming, saying “climate change is killing”.
The toll comes on top of hundreds of heat-related deaths reported in the Iberian Peninsula, where rising temperatures have swept the continent in recent days and caused wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans. Some regions, including northern Italy, also experience extended droughts. Climate change is making such life-threatening extremes less rare — and heat waves have even reached places like Britain, which has braced for possible record temperatures, the Associated Press reports.
Hot weather in the UK was expected to be so extreme this week that train operators have warned it could deform rails and some schools have set up swimming pools to help children relax.
In France, temperature records have been shattered, and hot, gusty winds have complicated the firefighting operation in the southwest of the country.
“The fire is literally exploding,” said Mark Vermeulen, chief of the regional fire service, describing logs that smashed while the flames devoured them, spreading embers into the air and further spreading the fires.
“We are facing extreme and exceptional circumstances,” he said.
Authorities evacuated more towns, and moved another 14,900 people from areas that might find themselves in the path of fires and smothering smoke. In all, more than 31,000 people have been forced from their homes and summer vacation spots in the Gironde since the bushfires broke out on 12 July.
The Ministry of Interior announced, on Sunday evening, that three additional planes were sent to join six other planes fighting fires, catching sea water and making repeated rounds through thick clouds of smoke.
More than 200 reinforcements headed out to join 1,500 firefighters trying to contain the blazes in the Gironde, as the flames approached precious vineyards and smoke billowed across the Arcachon marine basin famous for its oysters and beaches.
Meanwhile, Spain reported a second death in two days in its fires. The body of a 69-year-old sheep farmer was found on Monday in the same mountainous region where a 62-year-old firefighter had died the day before when a fire was trapped in the northwestern province of Zamora. More than 30 forest fires around Spain have evacuated thousands of people and blackened 220 square kilometers (85 square miles) of forest and grass.
Passengers of a train passing through Zamora received a frightening, up close look at a fire, when their train stopped in the countryside. Video of the unscheduled — and nerve-wracking — stop showed about a dozen passengers in a railcar panicked as they looked out the windows at the flames encroaching on either side of the track.
Climate scientists say heat waves are more intense, frequent, and longer because of climate change — as well as droughts, which have made wildfires more difficult. They say climate change will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
“Climate change is killing,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday during a visit to the Extremadura region, the site of three major fires. “It’s killing people, it’s killing our ecosystems and biodiversity.”
Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for environmental transformation, described her country as “literally under fire” while attending talks on climate change in Berlin.
And she warned of the “terrifying prospects for the days ahead” – after more than 10 days of temperatures above 40C (104F), it cooled only moderately at night.
At least 748 heat-related deaths were reported in the heatwave in Spain and neighboring Portugal, where temperatures reached 47 degrees Celsius (117 Fahrenheit) earlier this month.
The heat wave in Spain is expected to subside on Tuesday, but the respite will be short as temperatures rise again on Wednesday, especially in the dry western Extremadura region.
In Britain, officials issued the first-ever severe heat warning, and the Meteorological Service predicted that the record high of 38.7 degrees Celsius (101.7 Fahrenheit), set in 2019, could shatter.
“Forty-one is not off the cards,” said Penelope Endersby, CEO of the Met Office. “We have up to 43 seconds in the form, but we hope it won’t be that high.”
France’s often temperate region of Brittany, France’s meteorological service, said the French meteorological service blazed a record 39.3 degrees Celsius (102.7 Fahrenheit) in the port of Brest, surpassing the 35.1 degrees Celsius that had been in place since September 2003.
Regional records were broken in France in more than a dozen cities, with the weather service saying Monday was “the hottest day in this heatwave”.
The Balkans expected the worst temperatures later this week, but have already seen sporadic wildfires.
Early Monday, authorities in Slovenia said firefighters had brought one fire under control. Croatia has sent a water-dropping plane there to help after suffering last week from its own wildfires along the Adriatic Sea. A fire in Šibenik forced some people to evacuate their homes but was later put out.
In Portugal, cooler weather on Monday helped firefighters make progress. More than 600 firefighters were involved in four major fires in northern Portugal.
FKN